Earth Changes
Helicopter pilot Harvey Hutton, who knows Mount Aspiring National Park well, said he was completing a venison recovery operation about 7.30am yesterday when he discovered half a mountainside had collapsed and a lake had formed behind the slip.
"It's the first major one (slip) I've seen and probably the biggest in my lifetime," Hutton said.
He believed the lake was at least 50m deep and would need to be filled a bit more before it overflowed.
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| ©DOC
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| A massive slip in Mount Aspiring National Park has created a new lake, thought to be about 2km long and at least at least 50m deep.
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Antarctica's Dry Valleys are among the most desolate places on the planet. Here, no plants cling to the slopes, no small mammals scurry among the scree. The freeze-dried landscapes, with their rocks chiselled by the wind, seem utterly lifeless. When Captain Scott first chanced upon their craggy peaks and troughs in 1905, he labelled them the "valleys of the dead".
Now, a little more than a hundred years on from Scott's exhibition, US scientists have discovered that the icy landscapes may not be so barren after all. Microbiologists from New Jersey have chanced upon tiny frozen organisms that have remained alive for millions of years, embedded in some of the oldest ice on the planet.
Five days of continuous torrential rains have left four people dead and displaced thousands in Brazil, government and media say.
Rivers overflowed and flooded 58 cities and towns across the far-southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, the state's Civil Defense Agency said in a statement.
Temperatures around Greater Cleveland hit 88 degrees Tuesday, tying a 107-year-old record.
The normal high for this time of year is 69 degrees. But National Weather Service meteorologist Walter Fitzgerald said hot air circulating clockwise out of the Gulf of Mexico led to the record-tying temperatures.
The last time Cleveland hit 88 degrees on Sept. 25, Germany had a kaiser, Russia had a czar and the United States had Ohioan William McKinley as president.
Yesterday's low of 35 degrees at Toledo Express Airport tied the record low for Sept. 16 that was set in 1966, the National Weather Service said.
The record was tied with a 7 a.m. reading.
Similar temperatures prevailed throughout the region, but temperatures remained balmy enough - barely - for flowers, tomatoes, and soybeans to survive.
National Weather Service reported a temperature of 82.9 degrees at 2 p.m. Tuesday, breaking the record high temperature for the date of 81 degrees set in 1970.
After a record-setting spring and summer, Mother Nature decided to make it a hat trick yesterday.
With the temperature reaching as high as 33 in Toronto, not only did the city have the warmest Sept. 25 on record (the old standard, in 1958, was 28.3), it was the highest temperature for any fall day dating back to the beginning of record keeping in 1840.
Jene' Young
WKRG.comMon, 10 Sep 2007 16:51 UTC
For all of us on the Gulf Coast, lightning is nothing new. But many people have never seen a lightning trench as visually compelling as one we heard about at a local family cemetary.
This story first began after the Labor Day Weekend. The strike left behind the mysterious trench that has family members checking for any damage to their families graves.
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| ©Alan Sealls, WKRG-TV
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| Lightning trench in West Mobile created when lightning struck tree, travelled down to ground and then horizonatally just below ground surface.
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Fertilizers from farms and lawns are responsible for frog deformities cropping up in ponds and lakes across North America, a new study shows.
The finding not only has implications for worldwide amphibian declines, but could shine light on such diseases as cholera, malaria, West Nile virus and diseases affecting coral reefs, said assistant professor Pieter Johnson of the University of Colorado's ecology and evolutionary biology department.
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| ©Pieter Johnson / University Of Colorado
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If you are a parent, then you know kids will sometimes bring home a new pet. But when a little boy brought a 9-legged frog home to Kansas, some adults got worried.
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| ©11Alive.com
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| The 9-legged frog is raising concerns about a former landfill.
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Looking from above, the frog may seem normal. But with a closer look, it's clear there is a problem.
